At Washington’s National Zoo . . . electrician Stephen Gripper planned to check the lighting in the Great Cats exhibit. Then he was going to bow his head and pray. “I’m literally praying for God’s grace to set America straight.” . . . he said that government work was once synonymous with job security.

. . . [co-worker] Valerie Dyson, said she has enough savings to manage for two or three weeks. “I just pray.”

With precious hours remaining until the end of the fiscal year, there were no meetings between House and Senate leaders Sunday to break the logjam and avoid a government shutdown. Both sides dug in, leaving lawmakers with plenty of free time.

[Rep. Vicki] Hartzler [R-Mo.] did what many Washingtonians do on a Sunday morning and headed for the pews. She started with a rare hour-long prayer service in the House chapel and later attended services at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

The prayer service was the idea of Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who remembered how Benjamin Franklin summoned the Founding Fathers to prayer during a deadlock at the Constitutional Convention.

[In contrast, Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tulsi] Gabbard spends several weekends in the District because a flight to Hawaii can take a whole day. Knowing that many of her colleagues were in town with nothing to do, “I woke up and gave a few people a phone call and said, ‘Hey, let’s go for a hike.’ ”

She piled into a car with Reps. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) and Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) and headed for the Billy Goat Trail along the Potomac River in Maryland.

Saying that "it's fitting that this debate concludes with a prayer" because he believes Americans are pleading with Congress to defund President Obama's health care law, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas just wrapped up his marathon protest on the Senate floor.

"The pleas from the American people," he said of what he sees as the public's opposition to Obamacare, "are deafening."

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Josh Williamson was standing in a busy outdoor shopping area in Perth, Scotland preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, without amplification and NOT mentioning any hot-button social issues such as homosexuality, and within minutes, police arrived to shut him up. Williamson said he wouldn't stop preaching because it was perfectly lawful, so the police arrested him. Days later, the entire fiasco was repeated, but with a longer time in jail.

“This is the third arrest in as many months. These street preachers are not breaking any laws and are perfectly within their rights. The police are overreaching their authority and misapplying the law. Their actions show an increasing hostility towards Christianity.-- Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Legal Centre

Josh Williamson, who leads the Craigie Reformed Baptist Church in Perth, was quoting from the Gospel of St John when he was approached by officers who told him they had received a number of complaints about the noise.

Mr Williamson, 27, said: “The officer told me to stop as I was breaking the law. I asked him what law I was breaking and he replied that I was in breach of the peace.

“When I asked him to explain, he pointed to my mp3 recorder and said I was too loud. I pointed out to the officer that I wasn’t using amplification, but just my natural voice. I then asked him what a reasonable sound level would be.

“The police officer replied that the noise level isn’t the issue, but rather that a complaint had been made. . . . After a few more minutes I was placed in the back of a police van.”

The officer insisted that he was not allowed to preach and told Rev Williamson that he would be arrested if he continued. When Rev Williamson said that he would not comply because he was not breaking the law, the officer placed him under arrest for breach of the peace.

Rev Williamson was taken to Perth police station, interviewed and released with a caution.

A second man, who spoke up in defence of Rev Williamson’s right to preach, was also arrested at the scene.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

After the Kansas State Board of Education adopted new K-12 science standards in June, multiple lawsuits have been filed, including one backed by parents across the state, arguing that Kansas schools will be mandated to indoctrinate students in the religion of secular humanism thereby competing with parents' teaching of their family faith.

"The state's job is simply to say to students, 'How life arises continues to be a scientific mystery and there are competing ideas about it,'"-- John Calvert, Lake Quivira attorney involved in the lawsuit

The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education [COPE], had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade.

The case is the latest chapter in a long-running debate in Kansas over what to teach students about 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin's theories on evolution and scientific developments since. Kansas has had six different sets of science standards in the past 15 years, as conservative Republicans skeptical of evolution gained and lost board majorities.

The lawsuit argues that the new standards will cause Kansas public schools to promote a "non-theistic religious worldview" by allowing only "materialistic" or "atheistic" explanations to scientific questions, particularly about the origins of life and the universe. The suit further argues that state would be "indoctrinating" impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's protections for religious freedom.

According to the Pacific Justice Institute [PJI], the new public school science standards could create “a hostile learning environment for those of faith" . . .

The suit alleges that . . . "it's an egregious violation of the rights of Americans to subject students -- as young as five -- to an authoritative figure such as a teacher who essentially tells them that their faith is wrong."

If they can't block the curriculum entirely, PJI will settle for stopping the standards for grades K-8, and would allow the standards for grades 9-12 as long as the standards are objective "so as to produce a religiously neutral effect with respect to theistic and non-theistic religion."

COPE, Inc. said that the science standards have a “concealed Orthodoxy” that is bent on undermining the views of the faithful.

“The Orthodoxy is not religiously neutral as it permits only materialistic/atheistic answers to ultimate religious questions,” said the group’s statement. The group maintained that questions like “Where do we come from?” can only be answered honestly by religious dogma [i.e.: the new "science standards"].

The statement went on to say that “teaching the materialistic/atheistic ideas to primary school children whose minds are susceptible to blindly accepting them as true” is unconstitutional and dangerous, and therefore the new science standards must be stopped.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Speaking before adoring fans in Maryland yesterday, President Obama explained the dire need of Americans for ObamaCare, mentioning that his own daughters will benefit from the law's "free" contraceptives, and saying that many women would not be able to afford them without the new law.

PS: Birth control pills cost $9/month at Target stores . . . but not to worry, ObamaCare also funds abortions.

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. It’s wonderful being here. (Applause.)

. . . the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything. . . . a lot of you have been enjoying new benefits . . . more than 100 million Americans have gotten free preventive care like mammograms and contraceptive care with no copays.

So tens of millions of Americans are already better off because of the benefits and protections provided by the Affordable Care Act.

. . . And let’s say you’re a young woman . . . I’m interested in this, because I got two daughters, right? . . . If you buy health care through the [ObamaCare] marketplace, your plan has to cover free checkups, flu shots, contraceptive care. So you might end up getting more health care each month than you’re paying for the premiums.

Speaking with former President Bill Clinton yesterday, President Barack Obama suggested that under Obamacare young women may get back more in “free contraceptive care” each month than they pay out in premiums.

This was based on Obama's assumptions that a young woman would in fact be using some contraceptives on a regular monthly basis and that her health-insurance premiums would cost less than her monthly cell phone bill.

However, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's online "subsidy calculator," which estimates how much people will need to pay next year in Obamacare premiums, a person with a demographic profile approximating the hypothetical woman Obama described, would need to pay more than $200 per month in Obamacare premiums.

As CNSNews.com reported last year, the Target store in Northwest Washington, D.C., was selling a month's supply of birth control pills to people without health insurance for just $9.

[The Multi-State Plans (MSPs)] provision of Obamacare represented a partial victory for progressive forces who favored a national, single-payer system. In its place they accepted a category of health-insurance plans managed by the Office of Personnel Management under contracts with private insurance companies. Unlike the federal employee health plans, which are available only to federal workers and their families, these MSPs are guaranteed a place on each state (and District of Columbia) health-care exchange and will therefore be available to every resident of the United States. By virtue of being offered on the exchanges, premiums paid to purchase these plans will be eligible for the generous scheme of subsidies created under Obamacare.

Passage of MSPs required one other major finesse from Democrats on the Hill. In order to deal with the abortion coverage MSPs might provide, the law stipulated that each state must have at least two MSPs and that at least one of them must be a plan that confines its abortion coverage to situations defined by the Hyde Amendment, which are, to simplify a bit, cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in danger. While the law provided no specific assurance that the other MSPs (one or possibly many more) would cover elective abortion, it has seemed clear from the start (and blisteringly obvious from observing its past patterns) that the Obama administration would ensure that abortion-covering state plans (let’s call them ASPs) would be available everywhere possible (especially inasmuch as the MSP program might ultimately prove a gateway to single-payer).

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Heather Ann Clements, a 15-year professor (former chair of theology and philosophy) at Azusa Pacific University, has chosen to be a "transgender male," and so she's also chosen to end her career at the California evangelical Christian university which says it seeks “to cultivate a community in which sexuality is embraced as God-given and good and where Biblical standards of sexual behavior are upheld.”

It should be noted that a person's DNA cannot be changed; biologically, there's no such thing as a "sex change."

For background, CLICK HERE to read of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that religious organizations are NOT bound by certain federal employment regulations regarding ministers, and also CLICK HERE to read of similar employment issues at Christian schools.

When the professor formally asked the private school in Azusa, 26 miles northeast of Los Angeles, to recognize his name [Heath Adam Ackley] and gender change, the university immediately asked him to step down from his position. Ackley's lawyer said he did not violate any school policies.

"He has not broken any university code," attorney Paul Southwick said. "There are no rules that prohibit gender transition. The only code they have is homosexual conduct, but Adam has not conducted in homosexual conduct."

According to Southwick, the professor and university are in confidential negotiations to allow Ackley to stay at least through the remainder of the semester.

"University leadership is engaged in thoughtful conversations with our faculty member in order to honor the contribution and treat all parties with dignity and respect while upholding the values of the university," the university said in a statement to NBC4. "It is an ongoing conversation, and therefore, a confidential matter."

Ackley will stay on contract until the end of the academic year, but the university is trying to find a substitute professor to teach his classes in the meantime.

. . . for most of his life, Ackley said that he struggled to reconcile evangelical Christian teachings about gender with the way he felt inside.

He was baptized into Christianity at the age of 18 and then became an ordained minister. He tried to conform to the idea of Christian womanhood as best as he could, but he struggled with the idea of getting married to a man.

But the hormones, therapy and prayer that were aimed at making him feel better just led to “physical, psychological and spiritual deterioration.”

Ackley finally found relief when the American Psychiatric Association crossed “gender identity disorder” off its list of mental illnesses in January. He said his doctors took him off his psychiatric medicine. He finally felt validated.

Ackley is in the process of divorcing his second husband, choosing to let go of his married name “Clements” and return to his maiden name “Ackley.”

Ackley said Dr. Mark Stanton, the university provost and a clinical psychologist, has affirmed Ackley‘s transgender identity, so Ackley does not feel any “quibble” about his gender.

Dr. Scott Daniels, dean of the School of Theology and a pastor in a “fairly conservative denomination,” pointed out that the question of transgender people in leadership is “still in conversation” among both independent and APU-connected communities and denominations.

As the administration mulls over appropriate next steps, Daniels said although there have been recent shifts in the psychological community, there are still strong convictions regarding gender identity in the evangelical community and the transgender question is still largely uncharted theological territory.

“I think in the right context Adam could serve as an important voice in helping bring some clarity into that conversation, helping the church have that conversation in ways that are maybe more robust and thoughtful,” he said.

Dr. Kimberly Denu, special adviser to the president and provost, has worked on diversity issues with Ackley and said this is an example of “living and learning together.”

For 15 years, Heather Ann Clements—also known as Heather Ann Ackley, who was ordained in the Mennonite Church—has been teaching various topics at the Christian university. Her online profile lists over 20 courses Clements has taught over the years, as well as dozens of publications she has authored.

One of her articles—titled A Constructive Wesleyan Theological Proposal: Redemption and Sanctification of Human Gender—was published in a 2004 edition of The Asbury Theological Journal. In it, Clements argues that sexual confusion, including homosexual orientation, is a phenomenon brought about by humans’ fallen, sinful state.

“Even if a genetic explanation for homosexual preference is accepted, it is understood to be a tragic genetic defect caused by the fall, a pathological distortion of the originally good (and originally heterosexual) order of creation,” she wrote. “Homosexual practices and behavior are explicitly understood as sin. Christian homosexuals must avoid this sinful practice by remaining celibate.”

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Not a single Republican, or Democrat, senator opposed confirmation of Todd M. Hughes to be celebrated as the first openly homosexual judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Up to now, Hughes has been the deputy director of the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division of President Obama's Department of Justice.

President Obama nominated Hughes in February, and a Senate subcommittee approved him in July.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., lauded the confirmation, which he called "an important milestone for the judicial branch."

"I am proud that today the Senate is finally taking this critical step to break down another barrier and increase diversity on our Federal bench," Leahy said in a statement.

The advocacy group Alliance for Justice also applauded Hughes' confirmation, noting its push "for a federal judiciary that reflects the full diversity of America and a confirmation process that evaluates candidates based on their legal expertise, not how they look or who they love."

White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler published a blog post celebrating the confirmation as “yet another ‘first’ among President Obama’s judges” and added: “We look forward to the ‘seconds’ and ‘thirds’ who will come after Todd Hughes and his fellow ‘firsts’ currently serving on our courts.”

Seven openly gay judges have already been confirmed to serve on district courts, which rank one level below the circuit courts. The first, Deborah Batts in the Southern District of New York, took senior status in April 2012, and the remaining six were all appointed by Obama.

The Obama administration has won Senate approval for six openly gay nominees so far this term, five of them on July 30. The group included four ambassadors: Dan Baer to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, John Berry to Australia, Rufus Gifford to Denmark, and James Costos to Spain. The other two were Stuart Delery, assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at Justice, and Elaine Kaplan as a judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The president has also appointed 13 openly gay officials this year who did not require Senate confirmation, according to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The objective of worldwide jihadist terrorism is on full display, but how will American elected leaders portray it? In this week's Kenyan mall attack, as the al-Shabaab jihadists quizzed shoppers of their knowledge of Islam, they killed those who failed the test -- the Christians. Will Americans now be advised to memorize Koranic verses in order to survive terrorist attacks?

"The extremists are gaining ground rapidly. It is not just the poor but the rich as well who are rapidly coming under the influence of extremist ideology or becoming latent-radical."-- Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense and security analyst, based in Islamabad, Pakistan

From Mali to Algeria, Nigeria to Kenya, violent Islamist groups - tapping into local poverty, conflict, inequality or exclusion but espousing a similar anti-Western, anti-Christian creed - are striking at state authority and international interests, both economic and political.

They "called on all Muslims to leave the shopping center," Israeli businessman Yariv Kedar wrote in an eyewitness account published by the Tel Aviv daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

Other survivors told reporters that those who identified themselves as Muslims were ordered to recite a verse from the Koran, or to name the Prophet Mohammed's mother. Those who could do so were allowed to go; those who failed the test were killed.

This religious factor is a common denominator of nearly all of the insurgencies and conflicts across the Sahel, northern Nigeria and the Sudans, into east Africa and the Horn of Africa. It follows the historical faultlines of where the mostly Islamicised north of the continent meets the predominantly Christian and non-Muslim south below the Sahara.

In the wake of the worst ever attack on Pakistan's Christian minority . . . Critics worry that the government is only allowing the Islamists time to get stronger.

More than 85 people were killed at the All Saints Church in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday after a pair of suicide bombers targeted the Christian building, injuring hundreds of worshipers. A wing of the Tehrik-i-Taliban claimed it launched the attack.

Hundreds of Christians all over the country took to the streets. . . . In the southern port city of Karachi, a few hundred demonstrators chanted "Stop killing Christians!" and demanded that those who attacked their community be held accountable.

The bombing of the church was just the latest act of terrorism to set off a crisis in Pakistan over the Taliban [and al-Qaeda].

Earlier this year, a mob in Lahore burnt down two churches and more than a hundred Christian houses, and dozens of other attacks have taken place since June.

On May 14, in plain view of his wife and one daughter, suspected Boko Haram Islamic terrorist members gunned down Rev. Faye Pama Musa, general overseer of the Rhema Assembly International Church and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Borno state.

“Today you are a dead man. Call your Jesus to help you, Mr. CAN man,” one of the terrorists shouted.

Musa did not give up without a fight. While wrestling with the three men, he continually called upon Jesus [saying] “I will never deny my Savior.”

According to the Associated Press, since 2010 the Boko Haram network is responsible for the killings of more than 1,600 people, many of them Christians.

Monday, September 23, 2013

As conservatives have warned for years, homosexualists' demands for "gay rights" must, by default, result in stripping America of religious liberty. That prediction is now reality in a military recreated into President Obama's image, where Christians are now "forced into the closet."

“Yes, it’s a real turnabout where you, at one time, had to come out of the closet to admit you’re homosexual, and now you have to come out of the closet to admit that you’re a Christian.”-- Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin, former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) urged Deborah Lee James, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Air Force, to look into specific cases in which the military allegedly suppressed service members’ religious rights before she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. "We're going to give you about 42 specific examples as a followup," Vitter told her.

“A lot of us are very concerned about what in our opinion is political correctness run amok on steroids quashing legitimate exercise and expression of religion in the military, things like… telling somebody they can’t have a Bible on their desk - that’s a documented case. Telling a Christian chaplain he can’t end a prayer in Jesus’ name – that’s a documented case,” Vitter told James at her nomination hearing Thursday.

However, committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) said during Thursday’s hearing that “in terms of the reference to prayer, depending on where a prayer is made, if it’s made to a general audience, it could be a different responsibility for a chaplain than if it’s made to an audience of his own religion.

“This is a very sensitive area, because we want to protect freedom of religion for chaplains and for our troops, but we also want to protect the freedom of religion for people who are listening to chaplains,” Levin continued.

“Religious freedom is one of the core principles that make our nation great,” Vitter said. “Unfortunately there are far too many cases of the military restricting the men and women who serve our country from expressing their faith. That’s just not right, and I want to make sure the Air Force Secretary nominee does everything she can to fix it.”

“There was a meeting in San Antonio yesterday [Sept. 17] where 80 members from Lackland Air Force base came and talked about the persecution they are under at Lackland Air Force Base,” said the general. “That’s significant. And now, you’re an open Christian at your own peril in many places, under many of the commanders in the military today and that’s a major change, a major paradigm shift in our society.”

“They’re trying to force Christians underground so that our faith and our values do not impact the public sector. So that’s what you’re seeing unfold today,” said Boykin, who was one of the original members of Delta Force.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

At Marina High School in Huntington Beach, California, a 16-year-old boy who pretends to be a girl was NOT advised to seek psychiatric counseling for gender identity disorder (a caring action), but rather his mental illness was exploited through media hype and being elected homecoming queen by indoctrinated students.

“I was so proud to win, not just for me but for everyone out there. I think it really shows the progression of the times.”-- Lance Campbell, teenage boy-queen

Transgender teen Cassidy Lynn Campbell . . . who was born male but told reporters that she always felt like a girl, was crowned during halftime of Friday night’s football game.

Before Cassidy was crowned, principal Paul Morrow said that if his school was “to make high-profile news during its homecoming week this year, then we are proud that the message is one of equity and individual respect.”

The Marina High senior put herself up for the title because she hoped to make a statement and draw attention to the push for equality for transgender people. She also became part of a small but growing movement as transgender teens nationwide enter competitions for traditional honors such as homecoming and prom king and queen.

Cassidy said her legs shook with nervousness as she stood at a podium next to her mother. Then, when she was named winner, she dropped to her knees and broke into tears. Friends began hugging her. The crowd chanted her name.

"I just think it is such a huge step for the transgender community," she said Saturday, when asked to put her achievement into perspective. "The majority at my school wanted me to win. So many people embraced me and accept me for who I am. I think that is pretty profound."

Saturday, September 21, 2013

President Obama's Department of Labor and Internal Revenue Service have issued revised rules to validate same-sex "marriage" throughout the United States via private pension and health care plans, tax regulations, and myriad other employee benefit plans.

Same-sex spouses, regardless of where they live, can now participate in the private retirement and healthcare plans overseen by the department's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the department said in a release.

The agency said the terms "spouse" and "marriage" in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act should be read to include same-sex couples regardless of where they currently reside. That means a gay couple that marries legally in Minnesota or New York can still participate equally in retirement and other federal employee benefits if they move to Florida, where gay marriage is not legal.

The interpretation "provides a uniform rule of recognition that can be applied with certainty by stakeholders, including employers, plan administrators, participants, and beneficiaries," the agency said.

Groups that represent large employers welcomed the guidance, saying it makes it easier for companies operating across the country to have uniform rules to follow when it comes to issues like spousal consent on distribution of benefits and survivorship rights. Gay marriage is currently legal in 13 states and the District of Columbia. The new guidance extends federal employee benefit rights to married same-sex couples in the other 37 states - even those that have laws refusing to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

On August 29, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released guidance clarifying that same-sex couples who are legally married in jurisdictions or countries that recognize their marriages will be treated as married for all federal tax purposes, regardless of whether the same-sex couple resides in a state or jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriages. This is commonly called a "state of celebration" approach to federal taxation issues.

Plan sponsors [employers] are required to comply prospectively with the guidance effective as of September 16, 2013 with respect to health and welfare plans and qualified plans and, possibly, to take retroactive action in order to ensure compliance with the guidance.

If employers do not know whether employees receiving domestic partner benefits have same-sex spouses, employers may want to invite employees to disclose their marital statuses.

Friday, September 20, 2013

The Nanny State's so-called safety net has become a trap for generations of low-achieving Americans who learn to "make a living" by gaming myriad government programs. Earning too much "on the books" or getting married means you're kicked off government assistance -- as such, the system precludes climbing the ladder of success.

“Staying unmarried is the tax shelter for the poor.”-- Gene Steuerle, fellow at the Urban Institute

The [U.S. Census] figures, released Thursday, [show] Single-mother families in poverty increased for the fourth straight year to 4.1 million, or 41.5 percent, coinciding with longer-term trends of declining marriage and [thus increased] out-of-wedlock births. Many of these mothers are low income with low education. The share of married-couple families in poverty remained unchanged at 2.1 million, or 8.7 percent.

By race or ethnicity, a growing proportion of poor children are Hispanic, a record 37 percent of the total. Whites make up 30 percent, blacks 26 percent.

With poverty remaining high, food stamp use continued to climb. Roughly 15.8 million, or 13.6 percent of U.S. households, received food stamps, the highest level on record.

The numbers also reflect widening economic inequality, an issue President Barack Obama has pledged would be a top priority of his administration to address. Upward mobility in the U.S. has been hurt . . .

. . . Tianna Gaines-Turner, a low-wage worker from Philadelphia . . . explained that if she married the father of her children, who was living with them, she would lose benefits. If she told them she was living with the children’s father, the government would take action to make him pay child support and penalize her for having access to his income.

“So basically I did not report that he lived in the home with us,” Gaines-Turner said. “I reported that I was a single parent.

“Unfortunately, the system is not set up – I’m not going to say reward – but it’s not set up to encourage people to have families; to build on what the American Dream is really about is family values,” Gaines-Turner said. “That’s what I was brought up on.

“Family values, family dreams, is for two people who love each other to be able to get married,” Gaines-Turner said. “I wanted to show my children, especially my daughters, and my sons, that if you love this person and you want to be together, you do the right thing and you get married,” said Gaines-Turner, who also has three stepchildren. “You don’t stay shacked up.”

Based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Pew found that 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who provide the sole or primary source of income for the family, up from just 11 percent in 1960. They attribute this growth to the increasing number of women in the workforce.

And the majority of these breadwinning moms are single parents: 63 percent -- or 8.6 million -- are single mothers, and 37 percent (5.1 million) are married mothers who out-earn their husbands.

However, the two groups differ greatly in income; the median total family income for homes with married mother breadwinners was nearly $80,000 in 2011, compared to $23,000 for families led by a single mother [thus, below the poverty level in most cases].

. . . 64 percent of those surveyed said that the increasing number of single mothers in the U.S. is a "big problem," though that percentage is down from 71 percent in 2007. And young adults are less concerned about single moms than older adults; 42 percent of adults under 30 view the growing number of single moms as a big problem, compared to 65 percent of adults in their 30s and 40s and 74 percent of adults aged 50 and older. Republicans (78 percent) are also more likely than Democrats (51 percent) to view this trend as a big problem.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

After Sumner County, Tennessee parents adamantly complained, the new Hendersonville High School policy forbids any field trips, of any kind, to religious sites. As part of a World Studies class, students were taken to the Islamic Center of Nashville and given Korans. Students who refused an alternate indoctrination lesson were given a "zero grade."

“Someone needs to be held accountable. They are our children – not theirs.”-- Mike Conner, parent

. . . parents were outraged that the trip did not include stops at a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue for a better understanding of each religion.

Following the backlash, Sumner County Schools spokesman Jeremy Johnson released a statement which said, in part, "After receiving a parent complaint regarding field trip locations, our district has reviewed the practice and decided to eliminate field trips to religious venues from this class, as it does not provide equal representation to all the religions studied in the course unit."

It continued, "This decision was made due to the fact that equal representation in regards to field trips for all religions studied in the course is not feasible. Per our district policy, the student who requested to not participate in the field trip was given a suitable alternative assignment that was agreed upon by both the teacher and parent."

“If you can’t go to all five [local religious sites], why are you going to any?” asked parent Mike Conner. “We sent the principal an email and voiced our concerns. She sent back a reply and told us they could not afford to go to all five.”

Children were given punch and cookies at the mosque where they listened to readings from the Koran, Conner said. They were also given copies of the Islamic holy book – which some students took and others declined.

During their visit to the Hindu temple, students engaged in meditation.

“Our kids are being indoctrinated and this is being shoved in their face,” Conner told Fox News. “It tells me they are pushing other religions and they want Christianity to take a back seat. They want our children to be tolerant of everything except Christianity.”

Conner told Fox News his 14-year-old stepdaughter Jessica decided not to attend the trip. So her teachers instructed her to write a paper comparing and contrasting the Christian, Hindu and Islamic faiths. That’s when his daughter noticed something strange.

“There was one page on the sayings of Jesus, two-thirds of a page on the sayings of Gandhi, and five pages on Muhammed,” Conner said.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The ACLU sued the Rowan County Board of Commissioners in March, which resulted in a judge issuing an injunction against prayer, but the Board has continued to pray, and this week thousands of citizens came to sing patriotic songs and hymns in a rally for prayer at the meeting in Salisbury, North Carolina.

The rally — organizers put the crowd at 2,000 to 3,000 people — aimed at supporting Rowan County commissioners in continuing their practice of starting meetings with sectarian prayers.

Commissioner Mike Caskey opened Monday's meeting with a prayer ending, “I ask this is his name, who is above all other names.”

[Pastor Dr.] Baity had more than 30 pastors gather with him on the old federal courthouse's steps before they entered the commissioners' chambers together.

David Gibbs III, [Alliance Defending Freedom] lead attorney for Rowan County commissioners in a suit filed against them through the American Civil Liberties Union, told the crowd, “If you have prayer without Jesus, you just formed a non-Jesus religion.”

People said they heard about the prayer rally through Return America notifications, pastors in the pulpit, Sunday School, church newsletters and on Christian radio stations.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Marilyn Strickland, Mayor of Tacoma, Washington, speaking at a conference in the Birmingham Baptist church where four black girls were killed by a KKK bomb 50 years ago, said that the availability of abortion for girls is necessary to avert "a life of poverty with her children or her unborn children."

"Young women who have children who are not married are more likely to end up in poverty, and so are their children," said Mayor Marian Strickland (D). "When you take away a woman's right to choose, you may actually consign her to a life of poverty with her children or her unborn children."

Mayor Strickland said it's important to "help people become empowered," and she made the point that mayors can set policies at the local level to encourage economic development.

"We all do better, when we all do better. And we made great gains as a country as far as civil rights. But there's a lot of work to do," Strickland said.

On Wednesday, September 18, the [Boulder County] planning commission will listen to a presentation from staff and ponder whether to include a statement in the comprehensive plan declaring that "Boulder County acknowledges the rights of all naturally occurring ecosystems and their native species populations to exist and flourish."

Whether or not it's approved, the proposed language signals that the Rights of Nature movement has landed in Colorado, complete with website and Facebook page. It's essentially a push by a wide array of environmental activists and thinkers to grant a kind of legal standing to native species; if corporations that promote fracking and other forms of environmental degradation can be granted personhood in the political arena, why can't entire ecosystems have rights, too?

Since 2008, laws that specifically acknowledge such rights have been passed in countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador and more than three dozen U.S. towns and cities. The locals pushing for a similar measure in Boulder include the president of the county's Audubon Society; an attorney whose bio lists "life-long experience in the study of consciousness, nature and the law"; an "ecopsychologist and poet"; and Priscilla Stuckey, author of Kissed by a Fox: And Other Studies of Friendship in Nature.

Robert Zubrin’s book examines the philosophy that underlies one side of the struggle to value human life and dignity.

The first half examines the intellectual origins of antihumanism. The second half examines how the idea underlies current environmentalist policies and documents the compulsory worldwide population control that has been the foundation of U.S. foreign-aid policy since 1965.

Zubrin documents how eugenics is linked to environmentalism. In 1913, the neo-pagan tract Man and Earth, which became the bible of the continental back-to-nature youth movement, “laid out in full the conservationist case against humanity, technological progress, industrial development and advanced agriculture that has played a central role in the environmental movement ever since.”

Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published a study confirming that unborn babies develop language skills by listening to their mother's surroundings -- even remembering AFTER they're born what they heard in utero.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland looked at 33 moms-to-be, and examined their babies after birth. While pregnant, 17 mothers listened at a loud volume to a CD with two, four minute sequences of made-up words (“tatata” or “tatota”, said several different ways and with different pitches) from week 29 until birth.

The moms and babies heard the nonsense words about 50 to 71 times. Following birth, the researchers tested the all 33 babies for normal hearing and then performed an EEG (electroencephalograph) brain scan to see if the newborns responded differently to the made-up words and different pitches.

Babies who listened to the CD in utero recognized the made-up words and noticed the pitch changes, which the infants who did not hear the CD did not, the researchers found. They could tell because their brain activity picked up when those words were played, while babies who didn’t hear the CD in the womb did not react as much.

The finding support the idea that an unborn fetus can learn and remember just as well as a newborn, the researchers said.

Scientists have discovered plenty of evidence that what’s heard in utero can make a lasting impression. Fetuses respond differently to native and nonnative vowels, and newborns cry with their native language prosody (a combination of rhythm, stress and intonation).

The findings could mean it’s possible to give babies a little language leg-up before they ever say a word — particularly the children who may need it most.

Eino Partanen and colleagues at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit of the university's Institute of Behavioral Sciences set out to discover if there was measurable evidence that memory traces are formed prior to birth.

New research has confirmed that babies have memories formed while still in the womb.

Previous studies looked at behavioral clues to the conjecture that babies remember things they heard before birth, but Partanen and his team decided instead to test babies using EEG sensors to look for neural traces of memories that were formed in the womb.

. . . Dr. [Thomas] Verny’s research into the life of the unborn child has found that the child in the womb “can see, hear, experience, taste, and, on a primitive level, even learn in utero. Most profoundly, he can feel - not with an adult’s sophistication, but feel nonetheless.”

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Citizens of the rural northern Michigan West Branch-Rose City school district are outraged that many teachers and a board member showed public support for former Rose City Middle School teacher Neal Erickson who was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual assault of a 14-year-old boy over a 3-year period. As protesting parents are pulling their children from the district, Erickson's supporters stand by their statements, including that his sentencing was harsh because the molestation was homosexual, not heterosexual.

“I’m appalled and ashamed that the [teacher] community could rally around, in this case, you. What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher.”-- Circuit Court Judge Michael Baumgartner

The student body count in the West Branch-Rose City district, in northeast Michigan is down unofficially some 87 students following a tumultuous summer in which angry parents blasted seven teachers for writing letters in support of former teacher Neal Erickson. The letters urged a judge to be lenient in sentencing Erickson, who admitted to sexual misconduct with an underage, male student from 2006 to 2009. When the school board declined to take action against the teachers, many parents vowed to pull their kids out of the public schools, which have a total enrollment of just over 2,000.

Erickson, 38, was originally investigated last October once allegations that he sexually molested the then 14-year-old boy surfaced and was eventually arrested in December 2012. Erickson pleaded guilty May 8, and asked for a lenient sentence, citing "stress" and financial hardship for his family.

Although his attorney contended that the victim, who was 14 years old when the sexual incidents began, did not suffer severe psychological damage, the boy's family has said the incident left him depressed and angry.

Prosecutor LaDonna A. Schultz said Neal Haviland Erickson, of West Branch, engaged in sex acts with a male student over the age of 13, but under the age of 16. The student was enrolled at the school where Erickson taught.

According to Schultz, the three CSC charges against Erickson are for allegedly engaging in oral sex.

In addition to the criminal sex charges, Erickson's other charges include a count of distributing sexually explicit, visual or verbal material to a minor, a count of possessing child sexually abusive material and using a computer to commit a crime.

"It originally came in as an investigation into sexually explicit photos of a minor," she said. "They were looking into the child pornography and discovered an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student."

Records indicate Erickson was hired by West Branch-Rose City Area Schools in 1996.

Residents in a speck of a rural farm town in northern Michigan want to recall a school board member and fire several teachers who showed support for a local middle school teacher convicted of having sexual relations with an eighth-grade student.

The male [student], who is now a 21-year-old student at Western Michigan University, told police that he and the pedophile teacher had a homosexual relationship in 2006.

There were about 10 encounters. They involved oral sex, reports WSMH FOX 66. They occurred at the teacher’s house.

Prior to his sentencing, six current teachers and two retired ones penned letters to the presiding judge seeking leniency for their child-molesting colleague. The group — along with board member Michael Eagan — also sat with Erickson’s relatives during his sentencing hearing.

When John and Lori Janczewski attended the sentencing for former Rose City teacher Neal Erickson July 10 who pleaded guilty to first degree CSC against their son, they thought they would finally receive some closure.

But at that sentencing, they found several current West Branch-Rose City teachers, as well as a current board member [Mike Eagan], seemingly showing their support of Erickson. And it was there they also learned of 10 letters supporting him that were given to Judge Michael Baumgartner, several of which were written by current teachers in the district.

The Herald, through the Freedom of Information Act, obtained the letters of support for Erickson, written by Toni Erickson, Carol Rau, Sally Campbell, Amy Huber Eagan, Harriett Coe, Marilyn Glover, Sandi Lee, Kathryn Weber, Kathleen Sheel and Kathleen Palmer. Most asked for a reduced sentence.

“Neal made a mistake,” writes Campbell in her letter. “He allowed a mutual friendship to develop into much more. He realized his mistake and ended it years before someone anonymously sent something to the authorities which began this legal process.”

“I am asking that Neal be given the absolute minimum sentence, considering all the circumstances surrounding this case,” writes Amy Huber Eagan.

“Neal has plead (sic) guilty for his one criminal offense but he is not a predator,” writes Coe. “This was an isolated incident.”

Prior recall language against Eagan filed by John Janczewski was rejected Aug. 6 and Aug. 27.

Lori Janczewski states that her reason for wanting to recall Eagan is because of his support for the teachers who wrote the letters.

“We the people of Ogemaw County, wish to recall Mike Eagan, an elected school board official,” the recall language states. “He publicly supported the teachers who wrote letters requesting leniency for Neal Erickson, a teacher and convicted pedophile, who sexually assaulted a student.”

The West Branch-Rose City school board voted 4-2 Aug. 19 to require ethics training for the entire staff of the district, and to attempt to accommodate requests from parents who do not want their children in the teachers’ classrooms.

After the meeting, Bachelder told the Herald he voted no because he didn’t think the recommendations were “stiff enough.” Beasley did not comment.

“As a board, we have examined all sides of this issue and there are no easy answers,” he said. “We believe the letters written by the teachers may be protected under first amendment rights and that any disciplinary action will subject us to expensive, and potentially lengthy, lawsuits. Our students are our foremost concern and the board is not willing to mortgage the future education of the students of this district by becoming embroiled in a first amendment lawsuit.”

Many community members packed the auditorium at Ogemaw Heights High School for the meeting, most speaking out against the teachers, while a few spoke in their defense.

The [teachers'] letters reveal a mindset, a worldview, and a relativistic standpoint that not only endangers schoolchildren, but is also detrimental to America as a whole.

. . . In her letter to the judge on Neal's behalf, [his teacher/wife Toni] Erickson said this:

As for punishment, because I know that is something the community expects, hasn't he been punished enough? He is losing a job he has held for 17 years [during three of which he was raping a child] and losing all future career potential as a teacher.

I have seen many delightful students who have been damaged by horrible events in their lives. While I acknowledge that Neal's conduct with [a victim he found 'delightful'] was wrong, I do not believe [the 14-year-old] was damaged by Neal's action[s].

Fourth grade teacher Marilyn Glover described a 'sexual predator' as rapist who rapes a child more than once, and Kathleen Scheel defined sexual molestation of a child as an "inappropriate relationship."

. . . [Teacher] Scheel argued that Erickson had access to 1,000 children but raped only one, proving that "Our community's children are not at risk of Neal's presence -- he is not a predator."